passionate about inspiration, beauty & nostalgia

Forties Wedding

This weeks wedding inspiration is a tie-in from my trip to Bletchley Park over the weekend and were all ideas from when I planned my wedding last year. I knew I wanted a forties wedding pretty much straight away so my first port of call was to decide on which aspect of the forties I wanted to convey. In the end I decided on a mixture of Hollywood glam and vintage countryside. So I made a couple of mood boards to explore these themes.

Atonement

Dior Venus and Junon

Dior Junon

Atonement

The film Atonement had a big influence on my wedding, being my favourite book it seemed a natural place to look to. I love the dusky ethereal tones used in the film and as a result I opted for the colour scheme of seafoam blues, dusty pinks and coffee.

I wanted to incorporate the aspect of the Edith Head inspired glamour which was popular in the late 40s and 50s; think High Society meets Sabrina. I also incorporated my love of these old movies in my stationary using film titles as table names and using bold typographic fonts in my poster inspired invites.

I chose wildflower bouquets and herbs to create a soft vintage feel. I also used bunting, doilies and the good old fashioned tea cup to create a celebratory tea party.

I actually ended up having two wedding cakes, the naked Victoria sponge which has become a huge trend recently, and a cheese tower.

The dress

I loved the idea of a vintage ball gown, even though a mermaid style was my first choice (something I unfortunately don’t have the height for being only 4ft 11.)

I was adamant I would have a white (NOT ivory) tight fitting dress; how wrong I was!

White made me look even younger than normal so I eventually gave in and tried the gorgeous Willow by Jenny Packham; Massively out of my price range at around £3000. This helped me to experiment more with dress styles and colours.

But one thing remained the same; I knew I wanted something different for my wedding dress and eventually I opted for a Dior Venus connoting gown in the form of Justin Alexander’s 8483 in coffee. Which I bravely, or stupidly, ordered blindly using only online images as my colour reference.

Now I’ll be honest, this dress isn’t what I first thought of when I thought 1940s so I had to do my research to reassure myself that it would fit into the theme.

The more images I looked at of forties gowns the more I was sure it was the one.

(Please forgive my dodgy sketch here.)

So after a lot of searching through Pinterest and making a hell of a lot of mood boards here is how my bridal look ended up

The famous Veronica Lake style waves (who incidentally was the same height as me)